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• Pudutr0n@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  honesty, kindness and fairness.

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  • Cleisthenian@lemmy.ml ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Ciceronian opinions!

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  • chortle_tortle@mander.xyz ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    I guess I don’t see those as eroding in our society. Every day I see people in my community and am greeted with kindness, everyday I see injustice and find people wanting for fairness, and every day I see lies spread and people fighting it with honesty.

    I think why myself and people with similar mindsets do believe the problem is capitalism not a spontaneous decay of society is that when normal interactions are driven by the virtues you’ve listed, and they are the deep core desires of basically every person, why is it that we have systems that make it so hard to live those virtues?

    It seems to me that while I pay money every month for healthcare, the doctors have to fight for my ability to get the care I need. While I know teachers that desperately want to help children, schools struggle to convince that investing in our children’s future is worth it. While people don’t want folks to live without homes, the large systems that allow us to make choices about it seem most interested in making sure property values stay unobtainable.

    I don’t know that I would convince you anything, but consider that these values are not lost but that they are stifled. And when you build a system that gives resources, status, and power to the most cruel and cutthroat, it’s not surprising that virtues are eroded for the sake of money.

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    • Pudutr0n@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      I don’t think there’s a system in place that gives resources, status and power to the most cruel beyond nature. The way i see it, power will always corrupt, with or without capital/money/stock/land ownership as a proxy to represent it. Even if we got rid of money. Look at any empire in human history, even before currency was invented (the same thing used to happen with cattle). You’ll see a bunch of ruthless assholes ruling over a few that are comfortable enough and a great majority that are just trying to survive. It’s been this way since we stopped living in tribal settings and invented the city (due to agriculture). And the kicker is decapitating rulers will only get you new ruthless asshole rulers.

      Kindness is about how we treat people outside our own tribes, not within them. People learn by example. The ruthless leaders will always be there, but we can stop buying the poison when it’s sold to us and be kind to each other.

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      • chortle_tortle@mander.xyz ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        I don’t think there’s a system in place that gives resources, status and power to the most cruel beyond nature itself.

        I don’t think it’s a core feature of natural law that pedophile rings of rich people can get away without a single consequence, especially when we compare it to same legal system’s treatment of a random wayward low level suspect. Further with small petty theft or individual crimes we are incredibly harsh, leading to some of the hightest rates of imprisonment in the world, but the only amelioration for massive companies doing illegal things is expensive lawsuits that end with the guilty paying back a fraction of they made of the injustice to begin with. These aren’t core aspects of nature, these are how our systems have chosen they should be enforced.

        I don’t know that I agree power inherently corrupts, it seems to me more likely that it attracts the corrupt, but in either of these cases the solution isn’t to throw up our hands and give the sword to those most ruthless in their desire to wield it. We build systems of accountability and transparency, keep them in check.

        Our recent history is short, and I believe that like we evolve technologically, we evolve socially. We’ve left the idea of divine right as the basis for rule, but many of it’s remnants like white supremacy, patriarchy, and their results still decide the basis of our systems. I believe that if we break those systems and truly ask ourselves as a society, how can we best replicate our virtues in the systems we build, we can construct something more just.

        I don’t propose we simply have utopia, but I think we can learn from the past and realize ways to build fairness, honesty, and kindness for others into the laws and ways that we govern. It requires upkeep and there will be disagreements, and the ruthless will always exist, but it doesn’t have to reward the ruthless with leadership. The way our current system rewards health insurance CEOs for finding new methods of rejecting insurance could be replaced with a democratic system that leaves no one enriched by the cruelty of the profits.

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